Today I met Pavlo.

Now that I think about it, he could have been "Pavlov," which is a more familiar name, but I distinctly remember hearing "Pavlo." Pablo, with a V.

Pavlo and I went on a bookstores tour of Boston, which really meant a rare book shop near Dunkin' Donuts (I touched a book written by Galileo that was printed in... a very long time ago), the three-story Brattle Book Store which boasts a million books, and the book store of our tour guide Bob Marshall, an ex-Air Force pilot, current police inspector book collector who looked like a mole with his buzzed hair and wide, friendly nose of Ukrainian descent (his great-grandfather came from the Ukraine during the 1890s, and because he grandfather was to be a lawyer, they named him John Marshall, thus shaking off the 6 mile long name of his ancestors). Bob knew all of the policemen and city workers on the street; he stood up to the aggressive panhandlers, and he used lines like "Did you hurt yourself? You know, when you fell from heaven" on the girls who left the tour early. His heavy Boston accent prevented him from pronouncing words like "partnering" correctly, and he was about 5' 3". Altogether, an adorable man and a pleasant time.

Pavlo was born four days after Chernobyl, but the wind blew East, instead of West, (or West instead of East,) so he was spared. In the Ukrainian education system, students take 16-18 courses in a term, so it was a shock to go to an American style school in Switzerland in 10th grade, where he only took 6 or 7 courses, and more of a shock now to take only four. Pavlo wants to concentrate in Mechanical Engineering, and perhaps study abroad in Germany. He has pretty bad acne, glasses, and a sloping nose that seems to make sense when he tells you he likes to alpine ski. Blonde, tall, wears a belt high on his waist where it's meant to be--that's Pavlo, who told me, "Human beings are quite brittle."